Ancient Tales
by ByzantineComposition
Summary: Something terrible is coming, a primeval evil is waking and private detective Richard Grayson has a hunch that this curious blue haired girl holds the key to this mystery. A Lovecraft inspired RobRae.
1. The Oncoming Storm

**Hey, so this was a story I was going to post on my main account, but it just seemed to...different from what I usually do so I figured I'd make an alternate account and throw it up here. This is meant to be kind of a cross between Teen Titans and the ideas of the Lovecraft mythos, and now I bet you can guess why I deemed this too offbeat for my main account. So, since I've had this lifelong dream of writing like the original, master H.P Lovecraft himself a few of these chapters may seem to have a lot of purple prose, and lots of longs words I'm going to attempt to use to try and make myself sound smart. I apologize in advance, I'm going to try and tone it down for future chapters, so in the meantime please bear with me. Have fun, and please feel free to give me feedback.**

Seven days after Richard Grayson noticed the Raven disappear the world began to crack. A good distance from Bludhaven in a sleepy little town that still went by the title bestowed to it by its Eastern European ancestors; the city of Kevi became the staging ground for the worst mass killing the Eastern Seaboard had ever seen since the Civil War took place.

Kevi was a small town located just near the border where the peaks of the Appalachians met sprawling farmland. It would never have been known to Grayson or anyone else from the large New England cities such as Gotham or Bludhaven had it not been for the incident. Lakes and rivers that had beckoned settlers and travelers to the area for generations had made the area inviting though easily forgettable to the passing urbanite. Though, as the settlers would soon discover; as had the natives before them, the area was no place for human habitation. Dark apparitions seemed to hold in the cloudy peaks of the mountains, and formless shadows slithered through the waters by night. The respectable people of the Appalachia had long since avoided the area, leaving the area to squalor, letting it descend from a town, to a village, to a hamlet of decadence and decay.

It was in Kevi, on the last Friday of October that some one hundred and twenty human beings were slaughtered. The locals, a strange inbred swath of every ethnicity and nationality that had ever attempted the call the city home, a swart, naturally disheveled, ill mannered group had, quite unusually for such an insular group of people suffered some sort of attack and had summoned help. A young man of some fifteen years of age had rode horseback for twenty miles and ran the last five before collapsing at the door of the neighboring towns police station to request help. He regaled them with a story so strange, and with descriptions of a slaughter so hideous that the chief requested help from neighboring Bonoeia before leading a veritable army upon Kevi.

The screams from the hamlet, a sorry collection of buildings and farms tucked away at a grassy inlet at the foot of the mountain alerted the men that the boy's story was no exaggeration. Primal cries of fear and agony seemed to echo down from the mountain town and as soon as the first car approached the threshold of the town, two gaunt, thin looking men, their faces painted red went berserk, hollering and charging the vehicle. A stone-faced deputy raised a double-barreled shotgun, aimed it squarely at his would be attackers and opened fire.

The ensuring two hours were filled with the smell of gunpowder amongst dying autumn leaves and the sound of dead bodies hitting the soon to be frozen ground. When the dust cleared twenty one men and nine crazed lunatics lay dead, one cop and countless others lay injured.

An investigation was promptly begun, evidence and dead bodies were collected and witnesses were interviewed. The residents, for men and women just having been rescued from the clutches of a massacre were quite unaccommodating. The xenophobic citizens would divulge that the men were part of a masonic order that met in one of the old town halls, their actions were apparently a reaction to the continued refusal of the rest of citizens to take part in some archaic ancient ritual. The citizenry by and large however, had refused for years to associate with the order. Why the group would choose now to stage a massacre was unexplained.

Frustrated, and with orders to leave the investigation to federal inspectors the police began to close their case. They dragged the nine dead bodies of the orders leading members into view of a dry plate camera. The stern faced cops gathered before the local ruin of the towns one saving architectural grace, the hollowed remains of the once spectacular St. Xenia Orthodox Cathedral. Before the gruesome spectacle of the dead bodies they stood for a photo, the final piece of evidence needed for official documentation before the U.S Federal Government took the case and handed it to the FBI.

Inside the bureau a typist, a silent, diligent worker concerned only with the completion of his type, an outsider to his colleagues sent a copy of the documents to a freelance agent, an expert in the outlandish, strange and paranormal. A Gotham native with a resume listing him as an expert in archeology and forensic sciences, a young man by the name of Richard Grayson.

"You shouldn't be here, leave," those were the first words she'd said to him. Two months before the incident in Kevi, Richard Grayson had been asleep, watching a strangely beautiful figure in a land of fire and brimstone. Piercing violet eyes stared at him from underneath the blue cloak. He meant to ask her where he was, why he was there. Then with a singular push, he found himself cast into oblivion.

* * *

As an infant dwells in a state of unwillful ignorance, disregarding the agencies and powers that govern creation so to is human kind utterly unaware of its own existence and stature in the universe. No mind can pierce the black veil that captivates and holds hostage the consciousness, that veil which utterly blinds us to all of space, time and our own sheer, empty mortality.

All beings know, consciously or not that there will come a point of time, a moment in history, when there will occur a final enlightenment of the corporeal mind. The mind will be greeted by the sunrise and the illumination of mankind. The promise of a new day, when suddenly anything seems possible…on that day when those who have strode to reach beyond the ephemeral limits of our own comprehension, this illumination, this sign will be terrible, the signal will be a death knoll for humanity. It will reveal out nature to be petty, literally meaningless, so far beneath the heels of the illumination that it could well be nonexistent. Human in every essence of the word.

One quite curious period of enlightenment occurred in the Fall of 1927, beginning on September 2nd in Bludhaven's historic New England quarter at the Bludhaven Universities Arkham Library, so named for the now doddering and quite insane former founding professor. This new dawn began, as so many others do with murder. Yet, days before that singular incident, for months even law enforcement and artists had recorded and documented the most peculiar of events.

Writers and artists alike reported strange, feverish dreams, with the most incomprehensible symbols and shapes appearing. Twisted, outlandish nightmares, which set the skin crawling and made hair stand on end. They witnessed monsters from the depths of infinity, shapes from beyond the edge of time and old gods long forgotten by human memory. Yet, when they arose they of course could not draw upon anything from their memory to help them recreate the incident. Deep in the prisons, calculated, sane criminal masterminds were reduced to mad, gibbering, lunatics, cackling away in the darkest corners of their cells, only to be deemed sound of mind mere hours later.

There was however, a peculiar item that came out of Prauge in that period. A former archeological student turned artist had concocted one strange, blasphemous creation. Splattering all manner of colors across his canvas in an effort to recreate the images that had haunted his dreams. The image was dry, joyless, an image of a great fire consuming everything in methodical, yet wild frenzies. The great cities of the world, golden Alexandria and fair Constantinople succumbing to the eternal flame, shapeless agony, and in the middle of that blasphemous painting lay nothing but the maw. A spiral of black and emptiness so great that those who examined it soon found themselves quite dizzy, and unable to look any further. Perhaps unsurprisingly, artist Joseph Wilson decided to destroy his piece "Jericho."

Whatever the cause though, almost no correlation between these incidents was ever made, and the civilized world plodded on as it always had. Yet, beyond the dreams of the dreamers and the fits of madness of men doomed to die were the hysterical visions of one Richard Grayson. Perhaps it had been the hypersensitive mind of his youth, one that absorbed any manner of facts and figures thrown at it, a history of study into occult figures, one that had taken him to strange and bizarre locations, or simply a general demeanor that attracted the odd and the curious he was soon to experience the September events as well. Something stirred in his unconscious mind that late September night and well into the early morning as well, a strange fit of delirium also drove him to see the ancient horrors.

Stepping mindlessly across a barren waste, in a daze or trancelike walk that only a dreaming man may preform Richard Grayson continued his aimless journey across the mindscape. Pumice and sulphur melted beneath his shoes, leaving imprints in the yellow and orange glowing ground, marked with flakes of black ash. The inhospitable land echoed with an empty noise, a lost sound like a singular bell in a field. There was no rhythm to the sounds, it followed no melody, but no natural refrain either. Like wind chimes, the sound was erratic and fitful, and every time it sounded it sent shivers up his spine. There would be one, two three long, soul piercing echoes, before a period of silence and then they would start again, multiples echoes at once. It was enough to drive a person mad. Only the bubbling sounds of the ground and the hissing of gasses accompanied the unmethodical noises, and then they were only audible in the spaces of silence.

A red haze settled in the air, obscuring vision even more than the occasional showers of black ash had. The land was barren and empty all around him, the ground occasionally giving way to gaping abyss' of pure blackness. Around him lay craters, holes, regions where the stone and rock had crumbled away.

Then, out of the haze and the fog, out of the dust and ash before him appeared a palace. It was a grand structure, a terrible Cyclopean landscape of ancient powerful architecture. It had to have been constructed with mammoth blocks of stone and marble, large, strangely shaped pillars holding up a circular roof with a design that could only be described as unearthly. It looked primitive, prehistoric, before Rome, before Greece before Egypt, and yet, perhaps due to the size or the scope, there was something awe inspiring about it. Just as old pagan temples create feelings of awe and mysticism so did this nameless loathsome construction inspire fear.

In the center of it all there was a carved throne, one that looked as if it had been shorn straight from the bedrock itself. However basely designed the throne was, the bas reliefs were delicately designed, finely chiseled, detailed to show human beings in agony, in abject fear and subjugation.

The main draw of the whole scene however, was the figure who occupied the throne, a figure many spans tall, his name unspeakable, his visage…

"You shouldn't be here," For the first time since he'd entered the dreamscape Richard felt a degree of clarity enter his mind. He tore his eyes from the indescribable figure in front of him and turned to face the new voice. Standing there in front of him was a woman. He could make out few details beneath her long billowing blue cloak and shadowed face. Only the eyes still stood out to him, two violent almond shaped eyes stared back at him. Mortality, something mortal, yet unafraid in this inhospitable land. Two beautiful eyes…

"Leave," with a single push the outstretched pale hand knocked him from the dreamscape, and Richard Grayson's head shot up from his pillow with a start.


	2. The Corpse

**Hey again. So I have this story mostly done, but I wouldn't expect daily uploads, it's got a lot of rough edges I want to knock off first. Anyway, not a whole lot of housekeeping stuff, just sit back and enjoy the chapter. Also, by all means tell me what you think, I'm always looking to improve.**

The lumbering beast shambled forward in an unearthly manner. It descended on its prey, a striking young woman cloaked in blue its tendrils spread out wide to ensnare her. Then, for in a single space in time she disappeared from its vision, vanishing as though she'd never been there at all. The next instant the monster was blown apart.

An enormous splatting sound echoed throughout the confined spaces of the room as the creatures stumbled backwards and collapsed, dead for lack of a better word. The pungent smell of ozone filled the room as an eerie fluid began to pool beneath the corpse.

The girl strolled over, a little to casually for her current situation and kicked the carcass, making sure it was staying down. Bending down she began to closely examine the features as shouting could be heard from just beyond the doors. Looking mildly annoyed the girl mumbled a quick orison and closed the brutes humanoid eyelids, before quietly slipping out the window.

* * *

Clarity was not normally a gift soon afforded to those who had just dreamed of such antique horrors and other terrors, but Richard Grayson immediately gauged his surroundings. A darkened room…okay so it wasn't so spectacular, it was his darkened room at least. Solid wooden floors, a mahogany work desk at the far end, and a bookshelf hopefully containing all the reference material he'd ever need. This room was as familiar and routine to him as anything. Papers were neatly set into stacks, strewn every which way, tagged on the walls seemingly at random with old newspaper clippings, yet a trained observer could see how it was ordered, every lump had it's place, every piece of information falling into one category or another. Methodology, order, logical thinking, that's the environment Richard Grayson worked best in.

His arm reached for the lantern by instinct, this hadn't been the first time a desperate knock at the door had snapped him out of a good nights sleep, or a nightmare. The hard hollow rapping forced him to shake off the drowsiness and head for the door. That must've been what was causing those infernal gongs in his dream. Richard snapped the lock on the window behind him, opening it in an attempt to rid the room of its oppressively hot atmosphere and let the cool autumn air in.

Wordlessly he walked towards the door. In the earlier days he might've shouted something like "someone better be dead or dying out there for you to wake me us at this hours," but considering the fact that someone almost always was he'd decided it would be prudent to simply keep his mouth shut. There would only be a few people interested in calling this late at night anyway, and only for a small handful of reasons. Private clients came at respectable hours, cops woke private detectives like him up at any hour they pleased. It couldn't be helped really, as Bruce had always said the day the criminal element started following a 9 to 5 was the day they hung up their hats.

As soon as he opened the door he was assaulted by a barrage of words.

"Boss! Sir! You gotta come quick there's been a murder a pretty bad one itsareallygrislysceneandMentowantstoseeyoudown…" the boys speech quickly descended into a garbled mess.

"Slow down, slow down kid," Richard said placing a hand on the boys shoulder. He was a shorter boy, no older than eighteen, quite hyper as well, and was it just the light or did his complexion seem…odd? The visitor took a deep breath and nodded. "Say…you're one of Dayton's boys aren't you?"

"Sir! Yes sir! Mr. Dayton's requested your presence himself!"

"It must be pretty bad if your "Doom Patrol," that Major Crimes Unit is already down there." Richard grumbled fumbling for his hat on the nearby rack. "Tell him I'm on my way."

* * *

The Arkham Library at the University of Bludhaven, established 1820 by Greek Immigrants and refurbished by old man Amadeus himself in 1895. With a plethora of ancient manuscripts, classical literature and un-translated works from bygone eras and empires it was a veritable goldmine for antiquarians and scholars alike. Yet, even with such a collection Bludhaven had always been overshadowed by its sister city some forty miles north, and thus sat in semi obscurity, much to the enjoyment of the cities few highbrow intellects who preferred to read and study in silence. The library was thus, with the exception for examination periods, usually devoid of too much activity.

Thus, the crowd that had gathered around the library steps in the moonlight struck the towns residents with curiosity, and Richard with an immediate sense of dread. He wormed his way through the crowd of onlookers, gently pushing or shoving them aside as the need arose and made his way up the steps. One of the cops in front of the crowd held up a hand to stop him. Quickly flashing a private investigator pass the cop nodded and waved him through as Richard proceeded to the marble steps. A second burly looking man in a police uniform holding a clipboard greeted him.

"Cliff," Richard began, hardly glancing at the man. "What's going on here?"

"I'll tell you when we get inside," the office Cliff Steele mumbled in reply, scanning the crowd. There was a definite nervous edge to his voice as he shoved the clipboard into Richard's hands. "Just sign and I'll fill you in."

"Sign?" Richard took the clipboard and began browsing the formal, legal jargon on the type paper. He furrowed his brow as he started to read slower. "Cliff, this is a gag order."

"Yep, Judge gave the go ahead for it twenty minutes ago, got these back from the typists in the last ten. Everyone who goes inside has gotta sign, now sign."

"The courts trying to make us swear we won't breathe a word about this case to anyone else? I don't mind telling you I'm not exactly comfortable with this." Richard took another good look at Cliff's face, despite the cops stoic looking face it was clear his eyes were bloodshot. Sweat was dripping from his brow and his hands were, however slightly, quivering.

"Don't play the noble crusader with me Grayson. This is the waiver you always get, for security reasons, now just sign it will ya?" The bystanders were peaking there heads around the security line now, interested in seeing just who was raising their voice.

"I get the form at the end of the investigation, not before, and it's always tailored to specific professions. I'm a P.I, I get a different form than the doctors or shrinks you guys bring in, but this is a generic catch all. An order for complete and total silence. Anyone with good standing in the courts could make this disappear without any trouble." Cliff looked a good deal more nervous right now as Richard continued to probe. "That one that came to my door, Garfield was his name? He was absolutely hysterical. Now I'm going to ask again, what's this all about?"

"Murder!" Cliff hissed in exasperation, grabbing Richard by the collar and dragging him up the steps and away from prying ears. "It's murder ok, a damn grisly one to. We called it into headquarters and then an hour later we get a call from some federal office or another telling us to enact a total silence order. That's all I'm gonna tell you, so either take the damn form and get on the case or don't and leave my crime scene!"

Cliff's eyes bore into Richard dangerously as he once again shoved the clipboard into the private investigators hands. Richard glanced down at the waiver again, back at Cliff's snarling face, and then slowly fished a pen out of his coat jacket.

"Must be some corpse," he replied in a plain stoic voice. Cliff just scoffed as he took the clipboard back and motioned for Richard to follow him.

The private detective set his cup of coffee back down at his desk, rubbing his temples and casted his eyes on the grandfather clock in the far corner of the room, hands reading 6:30. His mind buzzed with the events of the past few hours. Maybe he was just tired, it certainly felt like something he could've completely dreamed up.

"What was that thing?" he muttered to himself.

The room had been massive, finely carved green lantern stands providing candle light even though new electric lights had been installed about a decade earlier, firm oaken bookshelves and busts of historical authors only serving to make the room look larger than it actually was.

There had been some twenty men in the room, all dispersed into groups, talking with each other in hushed tones, others leafing through books they'd brought and some staring out the dark windows in contemplative thought. Antiquarians from nearby Star City, the dean of the College, the professor of anatomy, several medical experts as well as both police coroners. Mixed in with the already diverse groups were linguists, biologists, zoologists and at least one therapist. Whatever, differences the group may have shared as a whole, they all shared one thing in common, in the spacious room not one was anywhere near the broken window at the far left of the room, and no one took a step closer to the rotting meat bag that lay just below it.

On the floor just a few feet away from the broken windowpane was a body. The corpse itself was massive, perhaps eight or nine feet long. The spinal column protruding from the back and the bodies bent shape made an estimation quite difficult. The limbs it appeared, had been pulled straight from their joint sockets, but the bones looked so odd, so alien, like tree roots sprouting through the ground that it may have been a mistake to call them bones at all.

Strewn about across the floor where the arms and legs, vaguely human looking appendages, yet at the same time, almost anthropomorphic in nature. The hide looked rough, dry and scaly, the hands were in some deformed position and were shaped so that they could not rightly be called claws, yet not rightly called humans hands either. The legs remained barely connected to the rest of the body by a string of limp ligaments that looked suspiciously like blood covered teeth.

The only uniform thing about the creature was the blood, a thick orange yellow sludge that surrounded every piece of the body. It hissed, bubbled and let out steam every once in awhile as it oozed from the wounds. What little of the substance remained static still swirled and danced in small maddening circles until Richard had forced his eyes to move on, convinced the movement was a trick of the light.

It would have been impossible to declare the creature human at all if it weren't for the face. He had a swarthy complexion, large, ugly eyebrows, full beard and a sinister smile still plastered across the blackened lips. This creature had human features at least, but there was no way the beast before them, as humanoid as it may have looked, could ever have been considered part of the civilized world.

The police chief, Steve Dayton had hurriedly gathered everyone into a semi-circle around the scene once all his experts had arrived, yet even he seemed apprehensive about approaching the incredible stench that now emanated from the body.

"Alright, now that we're all here you can all consider yourself part of this case, unless of course those folks from the capital decide to shut us down. I want as much information on this thing as possible so all of you are to write me up a report with your personal observations, and I don't want none of you antiquarians trying to feed me any of that "horror that defied logic or description" nonsense."

The dean himself had been woken from his sleep not two hours earlier, by what he swore was an explosion coming from the library that lay right beside his quarters. When he and two other professors had arrived the figure was already dead. The dean himself might have chalked the whole thing up to an elaborate, cruel prank, some scheme of the local boys if the whole carcass, detached limbs and all hadn't been twitching violently and spewing liquids from every orifice.

Some members began to speculate immediately. Everything from the nature of the man on the floor to his cause of death, but no question seemed to have an easy answer. The professor of anatomy pointed to the nature of the bones, saying that nerve damage had caused the death, the coroner disagreed saying that the ruptured spinal cord indicated that the limbs had been removed only after the victim had died, yet still others postulated saying that it had been violently bled to death.

That's when the visions had started up again. His head had already been pounding, but some mix of the stench of the body and loud arguing voices simply seemed to confound the problem. Leaning up against one of the decorative columns near the door Richard had begun rubbing his temples in an attempt to find some relief. That's when it flashed in front of him. One image, for a brief moment, bore itself into his subconscious sending a sharp shock of pain through his skull. He winced and shook his head.

Another image flashed through his skull, he tried to decipher it this time, tried to make out shapes or images as his hands began to shake. He felt his stomach rise and eyes begin to water as every organ in his body fought to reject whatever was taking over his body. Richard stumbled, losing his balance and sliding up against the wall. Still the others in the room didn't seem to notice, if anything their arguing was growing louder, more dramatic, angrier.

Image after image flashed before him as the sensations became ordinary, and Richard, barely lucid began to attempt to decipher what he was seeing. It was somewhat manageable at first. There was a flash of deep luxurious purple, frilled with gold, two letters, Latin or Greek. Yet it soon descended into a web of lines and arrows, dots and points. A jumbled mess of shapes and signs, of symbols and pointless, mad, vain etchings, carvings upon some primeval cave wall, gibberish, the ramblings of some specter laughing at him…he was going mad, he was sure he was going mad.

There was a screech from somewhere in the distance, or was rattling around in his skull? Richard didn't know, and as he doubled over onto the ground he decided he didn't much care. He closed his eyes, and before him clear as day was a raven...no, a girl. She was large, easily larger than he was, midnight black, sleek build and billowing cloak bristling with a breeze. A breeze? Well he had to be hallucinating now. The raven turned its head towards him, and screeched again, eight red eyes glaring down at him. That was it, no boring through his skull, no feelings of malice or of ill-will, no more madness, just the eight eyed raven and him.

"Get a grip," a voice echoed inside his head.

When he returned to reality he had proceeded to hurl all across the polished floors. Thankfully, for his pride, he hadn't been the only one. The anatomy professor had fallen into a fit in the middle of the discussion and had requested a place to lie down, another one of the experts to had complained of a migraine before straight up passing out.

Richard winced again at the memory and popped another one of the pills one of the doctors at the scene had given him before taking a long swig of the black coffee in front of him. The most frustrating part of the night of course hadn't been the case, it had been the sudden presence of some twenty federal agents who had barged in soon afterwards removing each and every one of them from the case at hand. Something told him to drop it, this was beyond him and nothing good would ever come from getting mixed up in visions of the supernatural and strange symbols.

"Could probably find all I need about those symbols at the library though," he mused to himself, setting the coffee back down and grabbing his coat. Let it never be said that Detective Grayson couldn't become obsessed with the most bizarre of cases.


	3. The Library

**Hey, sorry this is later than the others, life got in the way. Anyways, here is the next chapter. I hope you enjoy!**

Blood had never given Richard Grayson much reason to pause, neither had death. He'd seen both in his life and had trained himself to deal with such unfortunate events. The dense dark New England forests outside his Gotham home, where hunters never tread and where the sunlight never reached had taught him how to move in the darkness, how to utilize what few tools he had to solve his problems. There was nothing, he had reasoned, to fear from the wilderness. Yet, when the problems started appearing within him, when his own instincts failed him, when he failed to operate the way he knew he should, that's when Richard Grayson often started to panic.

Thus, motivated by equal parts fear and curiosity Richard Grayson once again approached the Arkham Library, taking the long walk up exactly 56 stone steps, ambling through the firm doors before stopping and taking the chance to smell the crisp new paper smell of the latest arrivals as well as the musky scent that always dwelt in libraries. The familiarity, the sights and sounds immediately gave him a sense of security, something to ground him after the hectic night out. Even if it had, not half a day earlier been the sight of a grisly and bizarre murder it was now a place of learning, a place he was perfectly at home with.

In the middle of the library sat a solitary woman behind the counter. She was young, quite pretty he mused to himself confidentially and had a perfectly cordial air about her. Compared to the spacious well-lit room he'd stood in yesterday the library was dark. Only the librarians desk lamp was on and the sunlight from the windows cast long shadows across the bookshelves. A pair of reading glasses slid halfway down the librarian's nose, her face half concealed by a wave of straight fiery red hair. Yet, her eyes still popped up as she noticed his presence.

"We do not get many visitors this time of day…or year for that matter," she smiled cheerily, it was warm, inviting and matched her sunny disposition. "I would guess that you are not just here to browse?"

"You'd be correct Ms…" he replied returning the smile and glancing down at the silver plaque on the librarians desk. "Koriand'r."

Was that…Slavic? No, Germanic probably…unless it was Aramaic…it could be Aramaic. Etymology had never been one of his strong suits, nevertheless he'd studied it for many long difficult hours. Deep in the libraries of Wayne Manor, not so dissimilar from the one he stood in now, maybe that's why it felt like home. Koriand'r just laughed at what had to have been a puzzled looking face.

"My friends simply know me as Kori," she said. It was subtle, but it was there, a faint accent. "Now, how may I assist you today?"

"I'm looking for some material on symbolism. Symbols, signs, messages…" he let the words trail off, not bothering to try and hide his cheesy mysterious tone whilst briefing flashing the old Grayson smile for added charm. Kori looked like she wanted to giggle before she began thinking just where one would find such a book. She scrunched up her face in puzzlement.

"Symbols, that is still a very broad topic," she said flipping her hair back behind her shoulders as she began browsing through a stack of ID cards. "Could you be more specific friend?"

Friend, well good to know they were already on amiable terms.

Richard fished his pen out of his pocket again and tried to recall the symbol he'd seen last night and began to draw it on the library paper. How did it go? Roman style right? A small X then…hmm, the memories were already fading. He cursed himself silently for not having recorded them the second he'd left the library last night. Finally, he completed the drawing to the best of his abilities and slid it over to the still gently smiling librarian.

Kori stopped, and for a moment a look passed over her face that Richard had seen many times in his line of work, on the faces of clients or suspects. A look that betrayed something more than simple fear, it was an enlightenment, a soul crushing enlightenment when two cogs in the brain, two ideas that subconsciously perhaps you've prayed and hoped would never come together suddenly do. It flashed on her face for a brief second, and then it was gone. Keeping her pencil trained on the symbol Kori tapped it for a few seconds in thought.

"Something wrong?"

"Maybe in a dream…Nope! I have never seen it." Kori beamed back up at him. Richard raised an eyebrow at the girls reaction. Maybe he hadn't just dreamt it all up, and he wasn't going crazy, this was obviously something worth digging into.

"Well who hasn't seen some crazy stuff in the middle of the night?" No reason to get a pretty girl like her involved though. Kori smiled back with an air of what looked like cool relief. Richard caught her subtly wiping a sweaty palm against her purple pant leg.

"Yeah," she said with a laugh. "You're probably right. I am afraid I really can not help you with your search though. This seems to be outside my field of expertise. However, we do have a number of reference materials. You may find what you are looking for if you browse through them."

Richard just nodded with a sigh. This was going to take some research, like always.

"Do you have one that at least groups them by culture? I'm pretty sure this is Greek or Roman." Kori paused and looked back up at him before breaking into another sunshine smile, her worried reaction to the symbol all but forgotten.

"Then you are in luck, we have a new adjunct professor here, an expert in that field." Kori bubbled, standing up and looking around the library. "Her name is Rachel Roth. You will probably find her down in the history section, that's the east wing on the library towards the back. I am certain she can help you."

Richard thanked the girl and bid her farewell as he took the short trek across the less trodden steps towards the history wing, the university apparently, only kept the most well visited areas in pristine condition. He paced the corridors before finally coming to an open set of fading brown door.

"History Wing," a wilted and barely legible sign above the pair of doors read. Almost cautiously he strolled inside, taking time to look down all the alleyways between the shelves; a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of information passing before him.

He stopped as he finally came to the center of the wing, a white, finely carved marble statue surrounded by a set of reading tables marked the area. The statue was female, well chiseled, and beautifully kept. Long curly hair, passive almond shaped eyes, a relaxed figure, Greek robes dangled over the body…

"Pardon me," the sudden lethargic voice and touch made him jump in genuine surprise. He looked back to see a woman brush past him. It was like he was a little kid again, all by himself in the large lonesome corridors of Wayne Manor. He'd gotten lost more than once in that first week there, and every time Bruce or Alfred would be the ones to find him. Noiselessly searching, silently walking the grounds, like cats patrolling their habitat. They had been his teachers in stealth, how to approach others unseen and unnoticed. It was an art that had taken a good number of years to master, and it meant that this woman, whoever she was, was good, really good.

"Can I…help you?" she asked suddenly. Richard snapped out his flashback. He must've been staring. She looked as mysterious as she moved, medium inconspicuous build, with a slightly pointed face, pale skin and short purple hair. And to think he wore a trench coat to make himself look mysterious. Some people just naturally had that kind of aura.

Deciding to break the ice he nodded towards the statue.

"Aphrodite right?" The woman rolled her eyes and jerked her head towards a small sign right next to the statue before turning back towards her bookshelf. Richard looked over to see the words.

 _The Aphrodite, Hellenistic Period_

 _Anonymous, 150 B.C (?)_

 _Acquired and Donated by Oliver Queen 1855_

Well so much for breaking the ice. Okay time to try again. He looked over at the woman ascending the library ladder towards the top shelf and asked.

"Can I assume that you are the new adjunct professor?"

"You could assume that, yes," oh great and she was a smart-alerk. He really hoped this was Rachel Roth or he was going to look even worse. It was obvious that no amount of charm was going to work on this woman. He needed to dial it back a bit, speak in her terms and hope she had some answers. He held up the paper to the dim window light.

"Could you tell me what this…"

"Chi-Rho," the woman said without turning around. Richard looked back at her with a rare befuddled face.

"Huh?"

"Chi, is the X, Rho is the P, the X symbol is supposed to overlap the bottom of the P symbol though, not the top. They're the Greek names for the first two letters in Jesus's name. It's a Christogram early Christians used to invoke the name of God though other religions have used similar symbols in the past." The woman continued not looking up from the books.

"So it was Greek," he muttered more to himself than anyone else before looking back up the woman with interest. "How did you…?"

"It was hanging out of your pocket as you walked in," she finished for him. Richard took a deep breath inwardly, well he'd gotten his answer, a lot faster than he'd expected. He looked back down.

"I was kinda hoping for something more," he said out loud, again mostly to himself.

"What else is there?" the woman monotoned, coming down from the shelf with a new book and brushing past him as Richard leaned against the wall, hand in pocket.

"There's always something more," he replied lazily looking up at the paper in his hand.

"Relevant to your work? She answered dryly fishing yet another book from the dusty shelves.

"Something to discover, something to know," he replied nonchalantly, turning his attention towards the pine trees out the window.

"The wisest man in the world knows…" the woman began again dropping her stack of books carelessly onto one of the firm tables, as if releasing some pent up emotion.

"That he knows nothing?" Richard finished. The woman turned to him and cocked an eyebrow. Richard smiled back, a little cockily, but genuine nonetheless. "Socrates right?"

The woman examined him curiously, before finally extending a hand.

"Rachel Roth," she introduced herself. Richard, smile still on his face returned the gesture as the two shook.

"Richard Grayson."

"Private eye?"

"How'd you…"

"Just a guess," she replied with her dry monotone, this time her lips piqued upwards into a small smile. Coy, mostly silent, witty, intelligent, yeah some people just had that aura about them. "So what else brought you here?"

Richard must've looked puzzled at the comment because she the smile stayed on Rachel's face as the girl continued.

"You can't tell me you came down here just for one little symbol like that. You probably could've guessed the meaning with a little work." She finished turning back to the shelf and examining the books once again.

"I like to be thorough, I have this nasty habit of not trusting things that I can't see with my own two eyes," he countered with a smile. He had to admit, this was refreshing. After a month or so of nothing but small talk with cops, long heartfelt discussions with witnesses and violent confrontations with culprits, it was nice to just trade barbs and banter with someone.

"And I can't see the point in that, the more we learn, the less we know."

"I'm not sure many of your colleagues would agree with you," Richard chuckled, leaning towards the bookshelf and browsing the titles.

"When humanity makes a discovery are they content with that? " Rachel returned, her eyes boring into him now. Richard stopped dead in his tracks, there seemed to be something in her eyes, something dangerous, something ethereal. "Is anything immediately gained by the discovery? Or does it just lead to more questions? For every one that is answered how many more arise? What does discovery and law create? Just more of the unknown, and yet we continue on pretending like the nothing we have discovered is something we can build a civilization on."

Was is just him or had her voice…changed, in the course of the discussion? It must've been the echoes in the library, he told himself as he looked down at he shaking hands. Consciously he shoved them into his pockets and forced them to stop. Looking back up, despite himself, he smiled.

"The ancient Oracle declared that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone…" he began with a smile, waiting for her to close.

"Of all the Greeks know that I know nothing." Rachel finished, sheepishly smiling once again.

"Quite a philosophy you've got there," he smirked.

"It is isn't it? Sorry I was preaching again." She sighed, the smile still pursed on her lips. With that Rachel reached over and collected her books before placing them in her bag, as she picked it up she reached in and pulled out and old looking cloth. Daintily holding it in front of her face she flipped it around, revealing the embroidery of the eight-eyed raven. Richard took a deep breath…that was…

"There are things in this world that lay beyond our capacities," Rachel began again "Intelligence, drive, level headed nature, you have everything needed in a private eye; but it might be best if you let this trail go cold."

Just like that she was gone. Heading towards the double doors, bag in hand, with catlike steps, and not a single glance backwards at the detective.

Human kind is utterly unaware of its own existence and stature in the universe. The point of illumination for the corporeal mind can be a maddening experience, a terrible loss occurs, the foundation with which we have constructed our entire existence. Yet, the journey to that point, the journey to that piece of enlightenment is wrought with human experience of its own, and as Richard Grayson watched the professor disappear down the long halls, hips swaying back and forth a coy smile appeared on his lips.

"Rachel Roth," he said out loud, she was proving interesting.


End file.
